Medicis Fountain

When visiting the Luxembourg Gardens (Jardin du Luxembourg) everybody may not necessarily pay attention to the Medicis Fountain (La Fontaine de Médicis) which you can find in one of the corners of the Gardens.

The fountain is named after Marie de Médicis (Maria de’Medici) who was married to Henry IV, widow in 1610, mother and regent to Louis XIII (and grandmother to Louis XIV) and also mother to a Spanish and an English Queen. Involved in different intrigues she was exiled in 1630 and died in Cologne in 1642.

Marie decided to create her own “Medici Palace”, which thus is the today’s Luxembourg Palace, slightly modified since. She could move in around 1625, but for a rather short period as she had to leave France five years later. The palace was of course magnificent and included e.g. 24 Rubens paintings (now at the Louvre). After different uses (prison during the Revolution, Luftwaffe headquarters during World War II…), it’s today the house of the French Senate, but the gardens, the biggest in Paris, are open for public and there is much to see and do. I may revert to this another day.

The Fountain was obviously just ready when Marie had to leave. It was modeled on what she had known during her childhood in Florence. It had to be slightly moved when the adjacent street was widened by Haussmann. At the same time, in 1862, the statue group you can see in the centre was added.

You can find some of these photos on my photo blog.

Time to again wish you a nice weekend! Back with a new post on Monday!

Other Statues of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty (full name actually Liberty Enlightening the World) that we all know was a gift by France in 1886 to commemorate the centennial of the United States. Frédéric Bartholdi sculpted and Gustave Eiffel engineered the internal structure.

There are different opinions on who may have served as a model, but it could be the widowed Isabella Eugenie Boyer, wife of the sewing-machine industrial Isaac Singer.

Before making the big version, a smaller one was made already in 1870. It was offered by the sculptor and can now be found in the Jardin du Luxembourg (Luxemburg Garden). You may not know that the sculptor initially had the idea that a giant version of his statue should be used as a lighthouse at the entrance of the Suez Canal, then under construction.

The statue was constructed in the 17th arrondissement, 25 rue de Chazelles, not far from where I live. The workshop is gone and replaced by a modern apartment building. On this slide you can see that at least the building on the left side still is there.The statue was completed in Paris, but was put into pieces before the transport and reassembled. It seems that the stones on which the statue is standing on Liberty Island also were coming from France.

A smaller, but still big, copy of the statue (the photo on the top) can be found at the end of Ile de Cygnes (Swan Island) in the Seine River, slightly downstream of the Eiffel Tower. The lady looks in the direction of New York. This is a gift by the community of Americans in Paris (1889).

A full size copy of the torch can be found at the Pont (Bridge) d’Alma. As Lady Diana died accidentally in the tunnel just under the torch, it has also become her unofficial souvenir place. The reason for the great number of people around the torch, flowers etc. is of course the 10th anniversary of her death (August 31st).